Bill Reynolds: Anthem for PC team that started from the bottom

Sunday

Mar 16, 2014 at 9:29 PM

PROVIDENCE — They played it before every home game at The Dunk. The Friars would be huddled together, arms linked, swaying back and forth in some private ritual, and piped into The Dunk would be a few lines from a rap song by Drake, the unofficial te

PROVIDENCE — They played it before every home game at The Dunk.

The Friars would be huddled together, arms linked, swaying back and forth in some private ritual, and piped into The Dunk would be a few lines from a rap song by Drake, the unofficial team anthem.

“Started from the bottom and now we’re here.

Started from the bottom and my whole team’s here.”

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Does anything sum up this team’s season better than these lyrics, this team that came out of the college basketball wilderness to win the Big East Tournament for only the second time in 20 years, and now is headed for its first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade?

“Started from the bottom and now we’re here.

Started from the bottom and my whole team’s here.”

Because there was no question this was a basketball program at the bottom back in the spring of 2011, when Ed Cooley became the new Providence College basketball coach. Keno Davis had been fired after just three years, but this already seemed like a basketball program on the brink, worn down by too much losing, as well as well-publicized problems off the court.

The bottom?

It sure seemed like it.

Into this basketball swamp came Cooley, the guy from a tough section of South Providence who became the school’s first African-American men’s basketball coach.

Starting from the bottom?

Cooley certainly had, the man who once said that he grew up eating cereal with water because there was no milk.

And in a basketball sense, so had the players he inherited. Bryce Cotton, who on Saturday was named the Most Valuable Player of the Big East Tournament, had been a last-minute recruit of Davis’ in the summer of 2010. He was an Arizona kid who had not drawn any interest from Arizona or Arizona State. Suffice to say that none of Cooley’s four other starters arrived here to the sound of blaring trumpets.

Started from the bottom?

By the standards of big-time college basketball, all these Friars started from the bottom.

Tyler Harris and Carson Desrosiers were transfers, looking for a second chance. Ted Bancroft, who often functioned as the team’s seventh man, spent his first three years as a walk-on, a player without a scholarship. LaDontae Henton, from Michigan, wasn’t recruited by Michigan or Michigan State.

So this became this team’s unofficial identity, this sense that everyone had something to prove, from the coach on down. No big surprise. The history of Providence College basketball always has been written by kids who made their reputations in college, not before they got there. This team just adds to that tradition, this team that began this season without a lot of expectations.

They struggled with Boston College, Brown and Yale early in the season at The Dunk. They were life and death with URI in the Ryan Center.

“Started from the bottom and now we’re here.

Started from the bottom and now my whole team’s here.”

The team kept getting better as the season went along. This team that rode a brilliant season from Cotton and emerging seasons from everyone else. This team that became very good at The Dunk, fueled by big crowds and the sense that they were like some stock that had been undervalued. This team that went into Madison Square Garden for the Big East Tournament and won three games in three days to win both the conference title and the automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

And whose idea was it to keep playing the pregame song from Drake?

“The players’,” Cooley said.

He was standing Sunday night in the lovefest that was Alumni Hall on the PC campus. It had just been announced on television that the Friars were {+t}{+h} an 11th seed and would play North Carolina in San Antonio on Friday. Now the court was covered with adoring fans.

“But we all bought into it,” he added. “Because it’s all our stories.”

No doubt.

And along the way it became the team anthem, one that spoke to all their personal journeys, not just basketball ones.

“It started out as a locker-room thing,” said senior Kadeem Batts.

“This is who we are,” said Henton. “That song is my story. It inspires me.”

All over the court fans, both young and old, were getting autographs and wishing the Friars good luck in the next step on this dream season. For, like all the best seasons, this one has seemingly come out of nowhere, a team that had something to prove, fueled by players who also had something to prove, driven by some song lyrics that touched their hearts.

“Started from the bottom, now we’re here

Started from the bottom, now my whole team’s here.”

Yes, it is.

The Friars in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade.

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